Phonics Welcome. Please help yourself to refreshments.

Aims To understand why phonics is important for reading and spelling To find out how we teach phonics at Holmbush To find out about the Year 1 Phonic Check To learn how to support your child at home

What is phonics? Phonics is a method of teaching people to read by linking sounds with symbols. Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. When these are combined they form words Grapheme – a symbol of a phoneme, that is a letter or group of letters representing a sound. There is always the same number of graphemes as phonemes in a word.

It is generally accepted that there are 44 phonemes in the spoken English language. Most phonemes can be spelled in more than one way and most graphemes can represent more than one phoneme!

Phonics for reading and spelling We convert letters to sounds when reading aloud (decoding words) We convert sounds to letters when we are spelling (encoding for writing) To do this children must learn which grapheme corresponds to which phoneme and vice versa.

How do we teach phonics at Holmbush? We follow ‘Letters and Sounds’ which is divided into 6 phonic phases. We use the ‘Jolly Phonic’ pictures, songs and actions to support our teaching. In Years 1 and 2 the children are grouped according to the phonic phase they are working on. We teach phonics for 30mins every day. Children are encouraged to use their phonic knowledge in all reading and writing activities throughout the day.

Phase 1 This is a really important stage to help children really develop their listening skills. In nursery and reception, children will listen carefully to environmental sounds, musical instruments and sing songs/nursery rhymes. All these activities will help children when it comes to hearing the difference between phonemes (eg ‘v’ and ‘th’ and ‘f’).

Jolly Phonics – phase 2 and 3

Phonic Phase 5

Learning the Letters This involves: distinguishing the shape of the letter from other letter shapes (sorting); recognising and saying a sound (phoneme) associated with the letter shape; recalling the shape of the letter (or selecting it from a display) when given its sound; writing the shape of the letter with the correct movement, orientation and relationship to other letters; naming the letter; being able to recall and recognise the shape of a letter from its name.

Blending for reading In order to read a word a child must sound out each grapheme, not each letter (eg sh/i/p not s/h/i/p) and then blend the sounds together to make the word. Encourage your child to use a finger to follow the word from left to right when blending Encourage quick ‘smooth’ blending with ‘pure’ sounds (model how to do this). Talk about the sounds being ‘hooked’ together; if they become unhooked the word falls apart! Mark words with dots under single letter graphemes and lines under digraphs and tri-graphs. Start with simple 2/3 letter words.

Phonics Screening Check in Year 1 confirms that pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard Identifies pupils who will need extra help to improve their decoding skills Consists of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words that a child reads to their teacher Takes place in June. If a child doesn’t reach the required standard, they have to be tested each year until they ‘pass’.

Phonics Screening check From this…

…to this

Why is it difficult for some children? Difficulty recognising, or confusing the graphemes (eg b/d). Difficulty linking the grapheme to the correct phoneme. Difficulty blending the phonemes in the correct order. Not noticing digraphs/ trigraphs in words and sounding out one letter at a time. Not saying the sounds correctly.

How can you help at home? Encourage your child to pronounce sounds correctly when speaking, by modelling the correct pronunciation. Use ‘pure’ sounds when learning letter sounds and blending (Youtube). Play games such as ‘I spy’ ( either something beginning with … or I spy a c- oa-t). Flash cards – with or without pictures. Matching games such as Snap, Bingo, Pairs (with letters or words). Using magnetic letters on the fridge to sort or make words. Singing nursery rhymes and encouraging your child to fill in the missing rhyme.